


Even In Another Time

by skywalkersamidala



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, how many classical references can i cram into 1k. in true renaissance spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 22:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywalkersamidala/pseuds/skywalkersamidala
Summary: History has a selective memory.





	Even In Another Time

Even as a child, Francesco had known that history would remember Lorenzo. “Well, then it will remember you too,” Lorenzo said with a laugh when he said so once. “One won’t be able to hear the name Lorenzo de’ Medici without thinking of Francesco de’ Pazzi. We’ll be like Achilles and Patroclus.”

The comparison was even more apt than Lorenzo had intended. Because though classical mythology didn’t interest him the way it did Lorenzo, Francesco still knew enough to know that any number of things came to mind at the name Achilles. The Trojan war, his heel, the Amazons, Hector. Patroclus was just one of many. But at the name Patroclus, the only thing one thought of was Achilles.

Even as a child, Francesco didn’t have to wonder, between him and Lorenzo, who would be Achilles and who Patroclus.

* * *

Francesco lay on his side, watching Lorenzo lying there with his eyes closed, looking utterly content. It had been months since Bianca and Guglielmo’s wedding, months since he and Lorenzo had started working together, months since they’d become lovers, yet there were still moments when Francesco could hardly believe it. Could hardly believe that Lorenzo had chosen him to bestow his love upon, when he could have anyone he wanted.

That the sun in all its bright burning glory should love the moon with its pale and cold imitation light.

“‘Someone, I tell you, will remember us, even in another time,’” Lorenzo said, breaking the silence.

Francesco was startled; he’d thought he was asleep. “What?”

“Sappho wrote that, two thousand years ago. And she was right. We do still remember her.”

Lorenzo did tend to get philosophical after sex. Francesco smiled slightly and indulged him. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

Lorenzo opened his eyes, rolling over from his back onto his side to face him. “Just remembering something you said when we were children,” he said. “About how history will remember me.”

“It will.”

“And you too.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“But I am,” Lorenzo said with that naively confident smile Francesco had come to love so much. “Together you and I are working to help Florence become a great city, to bring peace and prosperity. History will remember both of us for that. Lorenzo de’ Medici and Francesco de’ Pazzi. Our names will be written side by side in all the accounts of Florence’s history.”

For the first time, Francesco allowed himself to truly consider this possibility, to truly imagine that he would have a real legacy, something meaningful to leave behind for future generations long after he was gone. That he could have a lasting impact on the world. All thanks to Lorenzo.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But history will remember us as bankers, politicians. It won’t remember _us. _It won’t remember how we loved.” Because their love was doomed to be kept in the shadows, to be unknown to everyone but the two of them. Forever.

Lorenzo’s smile turned soft, and he took Francesco’s hand and brought it up to his lips to press a kiss to his knuckles. “And so what if it doesn’t? Is it not enough for us to love while we are alive? Does it matter that history won’t remember that part of our story?”

“No, it doesn’t matter. But that part of our story could have been immortalized along with the rest, if things were different. If we lived in a different time and place. The Greeks found nothing shameful in love between two men.”

“Like Achilles and Patroclus,” Lorenzo murmured. “Or Alexander and Hephaestion.”

A demigod and a mortal. A conqueror and his general. One man famous for his deeds, the other famous only for association with the greater one.

“Yes,” Francesco said. “Just like them.”

Lorenzo yawned and closed his eyes again. “You needn’t worry, Francesco,” he said, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him against his chest. “For _I_ will write our story, and I will not leave you out. I’ll make sure you are remembered. And my account of you will be so glowing that people will easily be able to guess how much we loved, even if it’s never written outright.”

Smiling, Francesco closed his eyes too and allowed Lorenzo’s warmth to lull him off to sleep.

* * *

“Lorenzo, please do not do anything you will later regret.”

Lorenzo stared at Sandro for a moment before turning to look at Francesco. Francesco met his gaze steady on, his throat clogging with so many feelings he couldn’t express. _I hate you. I love you. I wish you were dead. I wish I was dead. You’re a tyrant. You’re my life._

He could not form words of his own, so he borrowed someone else’s. “Someone, I tell you, will remember us,” he said quietly, as if he and Lorenzo were the only ones in the room. And as far as he was concerned, they were. “Even in another time.”

Anyone else might think that he meant it rebelliously, that he was referring to his failed coup and telling Lorenzo that though their lives might be snuffed out, the memory of the revolution they had tried to give Florence would live on, simmering under the surface of the city’s consciousness until the inevitable day when she decided she did not want to submit to the yoke of the Medici anymore and finished what the Pazzi had started.

But that was not how Francesco meant it, and for the briefest moment, there was a flicker of emotion on Lorenzo’s face, showing that he too understood his true meaning. Francesco knew that Lorenzo, like him, was suddenly back in his bed, _their _bed that night, when everything was good and peaceful and perfect. When they were Achilles and Patroclus.

But now they were Achilles and Hector, and that terrible empty coldness was back in Lorenzo’s eyes. “Hang them,” he repeated, and he turned away from Francesco and left the room.

Francesco almost smiled as the guard took him away to his death. To think he had been worried that history would not remember him. Lorenzo had been right that night. Francesco’s name _would _be written alongside his in all the books. Because Lorenzo had survived to write his own story, and he would make sure that people in another time would remember Francesco as a traitor and a murderer, and Lorenzo himself as the victim and avenger of his crimes.

History would remember them as the bitterest of enemies. History would remember how they hated. History would remember the blood and the violence and the destruction.

History would not remember the secret smiles exchanged, the nights spent in each other’s arms, the whispered promises of forever. There were only two people on earth who would ever know how they loved.

And then the noose tightened, and now there was only one.

**Author's Note:**

> The Sappho quote is from Sherod Santos's translation, which I got from this site https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/mythology/sappho.html


End file.
